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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

10mans Are Not (Inherently More) Fun (than 25mans)

This is not the Part 2 I had planned. After reading some of the comments on my post yesterday, I felt compelled to write this post. Think of this as Part 1.5. Part 2 will be coming soon.

Authors Note: WoW, 20 posts before 6am. I new the title would spark some heat but I assumed most of you would read beyond the attention getting headline and look at the substance of what I posted. I will write a more detailed comment later, but please realize that I am not saying 10man raiders suck, that you don't find 10man raids enjoy about. What I am saying is that the things you like about your 10man raids are generally not a result of the format. The positives you site can also be found in 25mans and the negatives of 25mans you site can and will be also felt in 10mans.

Authors Note2: There I changed the title because it is clear that some of the commentors can't get beyond the title. I am very disappointed with quite a few of the comments I received. I thought my readers would give me a little credit before calling me an elitist and a moron. Thank you to those commentors that could post rationally even if they disagreed with me.

Lets get a couple things straight.

10mans are not fun.10mans are not more relaxed.10mans are not more casual.

There is nothing inherent in 10 man raids that make them more fun, relaxed, or enjoyable then a 25man raid. I realize that through out WotLK we have associated 10mans with these adjectives, and I'm not saying we haven't found 10mans to be more fun, relaxed, or enjoyable. I'm saying that it is not the 10man format that causes these experiences. It is my belief that what has caused 10mans to be fun will not transfer to Cataclysm with this change.

What makes 10mans fun?

The answer is simple (for WotLK at least). The 10man raids are easier then the 25man raids. As much as people say they like a challenge, they like killing bosses and getting loot more. Since that is easier to do in 10mans, 10mans are more fun.

So, why are 10mans easier?

The first and probably biggest reason is gear. Blizzard has said the 10man raids are tuned assuming that the raiders have 10man gear from the previous level. Since the normal versions of 25man raids have been so accessible, most players out gear the 10man raids right out of the box. It may take a few attempts to learn the fight, but you don't have to be perfect because or gear level will cover up some of the mistakes.

Second, the structural differences between 10man and 25man also makes the 10mans easier. Take Professor Putricide for example. A big part of Putricide is the need to spread out. Since the room is the same size in both 10man and 25man, it is much easier to maintain spread and range in the 10man version.There aren't as many people I have to avoid. Boss abilities are also less frequent or in lower quantities in 10man. In normal 25man Professor Putricide, he throws two Malleable Goos out, but in 10man he throws only one. It is much easier to pay attention to where one goo is going then it is to track two of them.

Finally, I think a lot of the 10man groups out there benefit from the organization provided by 25man raids. Part of the reason it is easier to form a 10man raid is that we already have the 25man guilds where everyone knows what roles people can play. To form a group you just make a post on your guild forums or make an announcement in Gchat and group comes together fairly easily. Now what if you don't have the structure of a 25man guild to help you. What if you have to recruit 10man raiders like you recruit 25man raiders. Now you're dealing applications and players you don't have experience with. All that 25man "work" that people don't associate with 10mans comes into play.

Why these attributes won't transfer to Cataclysm.

Since 10mans and 25mans will drop the same gear we already know that the gear advantage current 10mans have won't transfer to Cataclysm. And lets assume for a second that Blizzard does a great job in developing the Cataclysm raids, over comes the structural differences, and creates 10man and 25man raids that are roughly equal in difficulty.

If these two things hold true then 10mans are not easier then 25mans, and the pressure to perform in a 10man will go up. The thing that makes 25man raids more stressful isn't the size of the raid. It's that 25mans are harder. Your mistakes matter more. Therefore, a stupid death, a missed heal, or general poor play means you wipe. In a 10man this is intensified because losing one person in 10man is like losing 2.5 in a 25man.

The 10man format is not immune to these issues. They currently avoid them because the margin of error is larger therefore, people associate 10mans with more fun. If you add the pressure to perform to 10mans and you will see it start to include all of these pressures as well. I guarantee it.

I do think that 10mans will still be easier to organize then 25mans in Cataclysm, but I don't think they will be as easy to organize as they are right now. This change will cause a much more distinct line between 10man guilds and 25man guilds. And building a 10man group will require a similar effort that is required to build a 25man group. You will have to go to the WoW forums or where ever, to try and recruit people to your guild particularly to raid. You can't pull your group from a larger 25man group. Therefore the people who currently find organizing their 10man group less stressful will have more issues in Cataclysm because they will have to do more.

On top of that, if someone quits a 10man guild it a much bigger impact on a 10man guild then it would for a 25man guild. I realize that 25man guilds can lose a lot of people quickly as well, but its less likely to happen. In the end, I don't think managing a 10man group is going to be a whole lot easier then it is to manage a 25man group.

10man progression is based on a false premise.

Why do we have 10man progression in WotLK anyway? If you go back to the WotLK beta, Blizzard said the popularity of Karazhan and Zul'aman showed there was an interest in the 10man format, and they wanted to provide a way for 10man raiders to progress through content as 25man raiders could.

I know that there are some people out there who like the 10man format. If you have a tight group of friends this allows you to have more informal raids with just the people that you know. I do thing that they are easier to maintain then a 25man group to some extent. That said, I don't think that the popularity of Karazhan and Zul'aman was necessarily and indication that people liked the 10man format.

I didn't play vanilla WoW, but in my opinion Karazhan and Zul'aman were some of the best instances that Blizzard ever created. For an appropriately geared group the fights were difficult and interesting. It was also the best way to gear up new alts and get a sense on how to play them. Do you think people would have ran Kara quite as much if they could have gotten a full set of T5 gear by running a heroics using the dungeon finder? Do you really thing BT geared players would have continued to run ZA if it wasn't for the Bear mount? I doubt it.

I believe that the ultimate attraction of 10mans for most people isn't the format itself. It is the rewards you get from running the instance in that format. Why do 25man raiders run 10mans? There are 2 reasons: Gear and Achievements. In my experience most 10mans stop running once their goals are met. Once my Naxx group got the Meta achievement and all the gear we needed we stopped running. There was no reason to stay up late and do it. If Karazhan and Zul'aman had sucked. Do you really think people would have ran them forever?

Conclusions:

Once again, I am not saying we don't enjoy 10man raids. However, the reasons many of us find 10mans more relaxed and casual is because they lack the tension created by a progression focused 25man. If 10mans become just as difficult and just as progression focused as 25mans currently are, then the tensions we feel in 25man will transfer to the 10mans. With that, all of the adjectives I used at the top of this post will go away unless you already associate them with 25mans as well.

Overall, I think the combining of 25man and 10man raid IDs will result in a overall drop in raid participation. The players who currently focus on 25man raids will have to choose which format to favor. Some of the players who currently favor 10man raids will probably quit raiding. The relative ease of the format is what attracted them to raiding in the first place. When 10mans become more stressful and therefore less fun, they will stop raiding casually.

Do you have your Amani war bear? Did you do it in a guild that had no gear that came from a 25 man? I do, and I did. I agree with the anonymous person above, not shocked at all this comes from a 25 man raider.

It all depends upon your groups I think. Personally my 25 man is not fun at all. We have 18 or so really good players and then 7 players that just suck and get carried every week. In my 10 man, every single person is a good player and knows what they are doing. I will slightly miss doing 25s, but overall this change will make the game much more fun for me as I no longer have to do the stressful 25 mans just because it offered better loot.

For me, tension is generally not created by the difficulty of the encounter. I welcome that kind of tension. No - for me, the majority of tension in raids is usually created by the number of people that frustrate me at any given time, because they are begging for a summon, going AFK for the third trash pull in a row, asking for a healthstone when one has just expired, screeching on vent over the top of 15 other people, not pulling their weight, missed their assignment and need it explained for the third time, or are just generally wasting my time and the time of everyone else in the raid.

In my experience, these problems are greatly, greatly reduced when running the 10 man raid format - mostly because you are usually playing with a more tight-knit group of people who work and play well together, and don' t have to be herded. 10 man groups (in my experience) take more responsibility as a group. In 25mans, there are always a handful of people who want summons, haven't read the strats, forgot to repair. The feeling of pushing the group uphill is almost non-existent in 10 mans, ever-frustratingly-present in 25mans. (Do I sound bitter, by the way? :P)

Wall of text aside - simple math says that in a raid that is half the size, the number of people who will drive me crazy will be reduced. Same raid time, same encounter, same fight... but fewer people driving me up the wall. More fun.

There are some very specific size-related issues that make 10s more "fun" for me.

There's less noise on vent - you can afford to chat during trash and even sometimes on bosses, because vent isn't clogged. For me, with my frequent migraines, a 10 man run is heaven compared to a 25man run where everyone feels the need to chime in at once. Being able to chat casually with the group makes things more friendly and personal - and more fun. You can't really do that with 25-30 people in the channel because it becomes a big mess of noise. Strategy discussions after wipes are also a lot better, for the same reason. Being able to chat relieves a lot of the boss-tension, and I find that extremely valuable. And, again, makes the night more fun.

There's little need for assignments - which means far less time spent setting up assignment macros and making sure everyone understands the job. At most, the assignments are a one line "I'll take X, you take Y, Bob, you cover Z" - done. Of course, I'm hoping that with in Cataclysm the fights will be a bit tougher, and we'll need to prioritise carefully - but even so, it is far easier and faster to assign 10 jobs than 25.

Loot is simpler to handle (we used to just use need/greed in 10 mans), which makes it faster, which also reduces messing around and time wasted - which in turn reduces frustration, and increases the time we have to actually play, rather than standing around doing loot. I hate wasting time. A fast raid is a good raid - so less time wasted means more enjoyable for me.

Basically, the whole thing adds up to less mucking around and more action - which means less frustration for me, which means more fun.

So the size of the raid has a very marked effect on how "fun" the raid is - and not just because 25mans need more administrative work devoted to keeping them running, or because 25mans are more challenging and therefore carry with them a tense atmosphere by default.

Perhaps you haven't encountered or considered these things. But in my experience, they make for a much more fun, relaxed and enjoyable raid - even if we're doing something that we've wiped on 20 times tonight and it's getting quite frustrating.

My thoughts on it for a 25 man guild is this: "Oh whats that? You didnt come prepared, researched, and with the appropriate consumables? Guess what, you get to sit out, no EP for you. Guys we are doing 10 mans tonite" This will indeed cause tension and problems but the reality of the situation is it will help cull those that do not belong in progression raiding. This is not elitist, its the truth. Too many ppl app to my guild that have NO IDEA what the hell they are doing.

Ok you guys what he is trying to say is simply this: 10 man raids aren't really 10 man raids in todays raiding enviroment. How many so called 10 man guilds were using 264 level gear in 10 mans? For the most part you see a lot of people doing that and guess what? The only way to get 264 gear is to do 25 man or 10 man heroics. If I can't do pug 25 mans or VOA to get the higher gear I must instead use the correct level of gear for the content. Imagine doing ICC 10 in 232 gear with no 245 gear from 25 TOC? Sounds a lot harder doesn't it? In a 10 man there is less room for mistakes. One person dies in say lich king 10 and it is hard to recover. 1 person dies in 25 no problem usually. Healer dead? Battle res and keep going. Healer dead in 10 man? Unless you run 3 healers (which most guilds do not do) you can wipe fast. Don't believe me? Try sindragosa 10 man and have 1 of your 2 healers get ice blocked now we are talking about stress. I run and have completed both 25 and 10 ICC and I have more fun in 25 than 10 because its less stressful . In 25 I can carry a crappy player and be ok in 10 man I cannot either he performs well or fails. 10 mans are a great way to practice content but the fun factor wears thin after your crucial tank/healer/dps dies or dc's or is to sick to make it that day to your perfectly tuned 10 man group

Sorry, Gray, I totally disagree with you... I've been a 10-man raider most of my career in raiding. :) And while technically yes, we would have been considering casual for the 2-3 nights a week schedule, that does not mean our attitude is casual. We came into a raid as ready to rock as any 25 man 5-night a week guild.

What I find most enjoyable comparing 10 and 25 is that the 10 is a more tightly-knit group where you can really feel the teamwork... Now I have also done 25s regularly, but they have never felt the same at the teamwork level as a 10 does to me. They are more... well, intimate I guess is a good word... There's less room for error, you are more dependent on each other to do your job, do it right, and do it well. That very close interconnection is what gives me the enjoyment of the 10man that makes it my preferred raid format. Yes, I do 25s, too, but I always feel a sense of being lost in the crowd in them, even when it is also a full guild run.

A lot of all of this comes down to what you define as fun. Fun, to me, is sitting down with a kick-ass team that knows each other well and has each other's backs and are willing to buckle down and WORK to learn and master the encounter.

If your definition of fun is doing what you see as a somewhat watered down version of the same raid you are working on in 25, then I can see where you come from. But it's not where I, as a preferred 10-man raider, come from.

You very obviously have your biases and I respect your opinion. But the point is, you'll still be able to raid 25s if that's your thing. I'll be able to raid 10s because it's mine. The only thing you'll be missing out on is the ability to farm more emblems and slightly lower iLevel gear. I've been in a casual 25's guild and a more hardcore guild and even under the best leadership still enjoy 10s more. I find them to be more intimate. With the folks I run with, I get much more sense of a "team effort" when I participate in 10s. So they'll be more challenging? Great. So we won't outgear them going in? What's new? There will always be players that want the same things out of the game that you or I do. It just may take more effort to find them. I welcome the changes.

As an aside. I greatly appreciate and enjoy reading your blog. Thanks for taking the time to post!

10 mans ARE inherently more fun, actually. I have found it fairly easy to find a group of 9 people I enjoy running with and consider friends. In my 25 man group, there are only maybe 1-2 people outside of my 10 man that I'd consider friends and a few that I contemplate placing on ignore on a regular basis.

Ease of finding a good group aside, 25 mans are inherently less intimate - it takes considerably more time to get to know 24 other people than 9. So, unless you've been playing with the same group for a very long time and foresee that group staying essentially the same for as long as you play WoW, I suggest you give 10 mans more credit.

I'm not sure why you think you have any perspective on ten man progression raiding You are not a 10 man progression raider, you don't do 10 content in intended gear and to my knowledge are not a mind reader or prophet.

I raid in 10 man guild, we raid twice a week most of us don't have 25 man gear. We enjoy doing 10 mans, and love the change.

As much as I would agree that the new Cataclysm changes making 10-mans drop the same gear as 25-mans is the wrong direction for Blizzard to be taking the game, I would have to disagree with you on the fact that they are not easier.

The fact of the matter is, unless you are a high-end guild that can afford to have every raid position be competitive, you are always carrying dead weight. Whether its a healer thats consistently below the others, a tank that just isn't up to par, or a DPS that is riding the bottom of the meters, there are always 12-18 people carrying the rest through the instances.

The benefit of 10-mans is that you don't have to put up with the dead weight. In 25-mans, having 3 DPS that pull a good deal lower DPS than everyone is still better than 3 empty raid spots. With 10-mans, you have the benefit of gathering those 10 people that you know are qualified to be there and you are able to get things done.

For this reason, I forsee a huge decrease in 25-man guilds. Why would you want to be in an environment that you are carrying others through a place when you can see all the content AND get the same gear?

In saying this, I must admit that I have recently moved from the 25-man scene and started doing consistent 10-mans, mostly due to the fact that I can see all the ICC content (including hard modes) in half the time commitment.

Gray i think you have hit the nail on the head with this post. To the people saying that they don't use 25 man ilevel gear my question is this "are you using non tier items that you got with badges?" if your answer is yes then you are using gear that intended as 10 man raid progression gear.

While I do run both 25 and 10 ICC each week I consider myself more of a 10 man raider, that being said I must say that I find 25 mans to be much more interesting. They are more challenging, better loot, and when you do kill a boss there is a greater feeling of accomplishment.Over all I am not a fan of this new system as it stands right now, but ill wait till the release to pass my final judgment. There are both pros and cons to 10 and 25s mans that make both version enjoyable and I don't like the idea of having to pick one over the other.

And as for the relaxed raid settings that are in 10 mans now we will see how long that lasts when the fights are actually hard.

I raid only 10 mans, so I never "steamrolled" 10 mans in "previous tier from 25 which is equal loot wise to the new place on 10". I remember entering ulduar with 2 blues because there was no upgrade for them in 10 man content. I remember being afraid not that I won't beat encounters, but that I'll be ditched in favor of 25 man geared people who can "progress easier and faster", this ended up with me changing guild to 10 man only.

I remember entering Icc10 for the first time and Marrowgar hit so hard I couldn't keep up tanks (I was a healer obviously) while those 25 man geared dudes laughed he's a joke. Then behold, Marrowgar10 nerf "sorry accidentally we used 25 man damage values in 10 man".

I had a lot of fun, and still having. While my old guild, the one I left at the beginning of Ulduar, was a typical 25 man raiding guild "for teh lootz". They already had issues with people "signing up for farm runs but not for progress runs". Because farm runs = loot, progress runs = wipes, sometimes even without any loot in the end. I heard about a month ago officers were fed up and left, because "guild wasn't making any progress, people came to farm runs but we had to cancel progress nights". Oh yeah, now they recognize it? Since Naxx issue a whole year passed, yet nothing changed.

It was damn hard for me to find 10 man only guild, but I did, and I'm happy. I used to be in 2 guilds "we raid both 25 and 10" (second one on an alt) and the inherent issue was I was treated as a second grade citized who doesn't come to 25 mans, also people were picked based on gear, even for 10 man, so I was "worse".

Now why is 10 man more fun for me? Pure factor of number of people. Too many people and I don't know who they are, I don't feel personally attached, especially if rotation on slots is significant, it's harder to maintain good conversation flow on the vent, 10 man is like family around the dinner table, 25 man is like a noisy school classroom. There's much more loot drama, "X doesn't like Y", unnecessary rivalry and spamming meters. It's also more common for people come and try "meld with the crowd", hope "someone else will do this thankless duty".

The biggest reason I dislike 25 mans is I feel like in a goddamn school classroom. I left the school age long ago yet it still comes back from time to time in nightmares. I'm intimidated by big crowds. I feel much better in a small circle of friends, family, fan club or sports team. I hate mass events and crowds, where people lose their individuality.

Also healing is more enjoyable in 10 mans because you don't have issues with "3 healers spammed this target and forgot about that target" you also don't need strict and artificial divisions like "you heal group 5 and 6 and you heal group 7 and 8". Less problems with "he sniped my heal and pushed mine into overheal". On 10 mans healing is more versatile as well, while in 25 mans it's highly specialized and you usually spam 1 "best spell". Also healer setups in 10 mans can be so different you need to adapt each time. It adds variety.

I just love the announced gear change. - No more roflstomping 10 mans in 25 man gear and "lol it's eeeez" comments - No more elevated gearscore requirements which put 10 man raiders at disadvantage, where they're replaced in 10 man with someone with 25 man gear - Less people leaking from 10 man guilds, now so many treat them as a stepping stone, too low gear to apply to 25 man guild? Leech some gear from 10 man then state "thanks for gearing me up, bye" and going "where the real loot lies" - You pick a raid size you prefer, you don't go to "unfun" 10 man because you "need more badges", "need more practice before the REAL raid" and so on, you only go to your REAL raid

I raid in two different guilds on two different characters. During the week I play a Moonkin doing LK 25 hard mode. During the weekend I play a DK in a top 160 world strict 10 guild that uses zero 25 man epics from any 25 man zone.

From my experiences I firmly feel that both types of progression paths are as difficult, rewarding, and fun. I might even go as far as saying that the strict 10 path is MORE difficult than 25 on some fights (i.e. grobbulus pre-nerf, rotface pre-nerf, LK hard). But when we're talking about camaraderie and teamwork, 10 man progression is hands down the best place to find it. Those two things get brought out in a 10 man in a way it can't in a 25. Thus it becomes more fun. 25's are full of politics and massive amounts of outside game logistics. Plus the 25 man guilds are bigger. Often times you find many cliques in 25s. In a 10 man guild, there are fewer cliques IF ANY.

In a nutshell, the only reasons I do 25s at all is because of the achievements, mounts, and world recognition. The changes for Cata will deemphasize 25s but it won't kill 25s like a lot of people are afraid of. Some people (like Graylo) genuinely enjoy 25s more. Those people will stay together and still be a significant segment of the raiding population.

I've got to say, I really enjoy your blog. However, I'm just plain offended by this post. My guild's been an active 10-Strict raid guild throughout WotLK. We chose that path because we *did* enjoy it, the difficulty level (given no 25-man gear), the group dynamics, what-have-you.

Mostly I resent the concept that you flat out state your opinion as fact:

"10mans are not fun."

That's your opinion, not fact. You're usually good about keeping those two separate.

There's a few other things that really rub me the wrong way about this post, but that's not my place to bug you about your opinions. In any case, keep up the good work.

Maybe I'm just on the nostalgia bandwagon, but I liked how 10 mans were handled in BC. It's just too difficult to have the same encounter balanced well around 10 and 25 man versions. Kara and ZA were both well designed 10 mans. I think that splitting the design focus of each new raid between 10 and 25 lowers the overall quality.

I usually enjoy your posts, and find many small gems of information in your blog.

But for once I kind of disagree with you...I see the Blizzards new choice of "equalizing" gear and difficulty in both 25-man and 10-man content as a good choice.

Especially seen in a broader perspective....where there might be guild related achivements, giving both large and small guilds equal footing in completing raids and collecting gear.

I come from a very small guild myself, and we can barely reach 10 man for a raid at any given night. We have raided with a 7 players raid, but usually raid 8 or 9 people.

This makes the encounters a lot more fun...even thouh we wipes more. To us, easy-mode doesn't equal more fun. So for us the new system is actually an advantage...we can get high quality gear without having to PuG 25-man raids.

I have to agree with most of the posters before me.We raided 25 man once a week on wednesday with slow progress, because there are always the 5 people that mess up, slack, come unprepared and get carried. We now slowly make progress with the Thralls +% buff.Our 10 man group(s) were much more succesfull, challenging and fun.Fun because you have a connection to each of the other 9, much harder to 24.Challenging because the messup of 1 is already a wipe on progress bosses.Succesfull because there is no room in a 10 man group for players that don't pull their own weight.

I think you only think these things because you're fortunate enough to play in a 25 man guild filled with decent/good players. There are many skilled players capable of every hardmode in the game, 25 man or not, that are stuck in terrible 25 man guilds but have 10 mans that flourish. Being able to play in a 10 man filled with talented players rather than a 25 man with 15 good players is very fun and what a lot of people prefer.

Personally I'm yet to find any Icecrown hard mode truly difficult. World of Warcraft is very easy no matter what way you put it, hard mode, easy mode, 10 man, 25 man. Good players are good players no matter where they are and deserve no less credit for doing well in 10 man and not 25 man.

I just feel like they are taking the massivily part out of this MMO. Back in vanilla, 40 man raids were huge. The idea of organizing then cordinating that many people to overcome an obstacle was what drew me to the game. Then they watered it down to 25 cause there were too few people seeing parts of the endgame. Now after all that we are doing it again reducing the original MASSIVE raids to just a quarter of their potential. Its a big letdown.

I understand people like to tote the "10m are challenging" thing, but SURPRISE they rarely have experienced progression 25m raiding. So all you that been "oh big surprise he is a 25m raider" can turn that back around on yourselves. The fact is all things being equal more people add more complexity, more variables thus more challenge. Gray makes good points on this. In 25+ you have to consider space, movement, priorities, etc that you dont have to in a 10m equivalent. Im not trying to say they cant be fun but they will not be able to maintain the challenge and they are effectively killing the larger raids by offering the same exact loot w/o any (so far) incentive to try the 25's in cata.

Heehee. Perhaps the best thing about this whole raid lock out change is those people walking around with "Strict 10 Man" medals pinned on their puffed out chests will become ordinary raiders like the rest of us. :)

I think you really are missing the whole purpose behind 10 mans. I will agree with only one aspect of your post. To the 25 man raider, 10 mans are not fun. They are an extra burden that they feel forced to run to stay competitive.

The rest of your post is clearly missing the whole point. Blizzard originally created the 10 man tier to be for 10 man teams, not for 25 man teams. That is being fixed quite effectively. If you find 10 mans too easy in your 25 man gear, grats? That's not what the format is aimed at. That's like saying deadmines is too easy for your level 40 alt. Of course... They're on totally different levels!

Have you even talked to a 10 man raider? I am in such a guild, and I have friends in other 10 man guilds, and we are all VERY excited about the changes. You obviously don't even know anyone that runs 10 mans exclusively, or you wouldn't be posting false statements like "The relative ease of the format is what attracted them to raiding in the first place. When 10mans become more stressful and therefore less fun, they will stop raiding casually." I think the relative stress of 25 people trying to work together is what attracted them to the format. That is what attracted me. I really hope you don't think that 10 mans are harder relatively, because if you do, you are not the man I thought you were. It's been pretty clear through almost all of WotLK that 10 mans have in fact been more difficult for people who don't raid 25 mans.

And do you really think that these people who are casual and raid 2 nights a week in 10 man are off raiding 25 mans the other 5 nights? In reality, people in 10 man guilds have little time for much else, ESPECIALLY progression 10 man raiders. They chose the format because it's easier to coordinate 10 people than 25, which makes the fights less stressful simply for that reason alone. The fights themselves aren't easier, it's just that they have the best in their roster and aren't forced to carry that D/C guy, or the those guys who are a little slow but show up.

You are a great blogger and your blog is one of the first sites I check in the morning, but you've totally missed the point with this post, and you are coming across as a real jerk. I hope that you consider the fact that you're not equipped to discuss the 10 man raid format and move on, because I would hate to see you sully your good name any further.

Huh. I never thought of it that way. This may well be true for people who generally do both sizes of raids in a given week. For our guild, we only do one size of raid (10), so the fun-ness or lack thereof is likely to stay the same.

Interesting concept that would NEVER have occurred to me since I don't do 25's. I'll be watching how this plays out.

I have to agree with many of the posters above me. 25 man raiding does not necessarily = harder. If you make mistakes in either of the current raid formats you get punished, but if it is 10 mans and you lose a person to that mistake you just lost 10% of your raid, for 25 mans you lose 4%. There was a reason that Sarth 3d 10 man was the hardest raid encounter when Wrath first came out and why Naxx 10 man was harder then Naxx 25 man. If you notice all of those encounters were at the beginning of WOTLK when you weren't necessarily over gearing that content with gobs of 25 man loot.

There have been many times in this expansion as well that the 10 man versions of content has been much harder in the gear it was intended for. As someone else pointed out that Marrowgar 10 was at first using 25 man damage numbers against tanks. If you took a guild that was appropriately geared for the content it would be like dumping them into hard modes right away which is a tier above what they were geared for at that time.

Rotface was another infamous raid encounter where 10 mans were much harder then the 25 man counter part. You get to the 3:30 timer in that encounter and you would have 3/25 people in 25's running about all the time or 12% of your raid. In 10's you would also have 3 people running about, which is 30% of your raid. 20% of your dps running about in 25's not a big deal, 50% if using only 2 healers in 10's....that is a big deal.

Also in your post you just can't look at the gear difference, you also have to look at the buff differences. I can do a consistent 8k dps in 10's in my group, move me over to 25 mans and I am doing 10k+ on fights in the same gear. The reason for this is that I have a full compliment of buffs in 25's, yet in 10's I can expect sometimes as low as 1/2 those player buffs.

Another reason I think this has caused such an uproar from these 25 man raiders is that 10's have pretty much been there LOL practice/free loots dumping ground for most of this expansion that it has been ingrained in their minds that 10's is practically a worthless raiding format. This is forcing the people who rely on 10's and pretty much only raid 10's to be pushed into a defensive mode against the saber rattling of the opposition to the changes coming.

Have you guys actually tried ZA back when it came out, decked out in Karazhan gear? That was one TOUGH instance, and it could be incredibly frustrating to progress in because of the skill requirements that every player had to bring.

What Graylo is saying is that, fundamentally, most of us are used to an artificially easier experience in 10 man because we're usually outgearing it, AND Blizzard often removes or otherwise nerfs certain boss abilities in 10 man. Deathwhisper isn't the only boss with a MC ability in 25man but not 10man.

I respect 10 man strict guilds for not bringing 264 gear to icc10, it truly is going to be more challenging for them. Those guilds will likely not see a ramp up in difficulty, but the rest of us will.

Add to this the fact that a lot of 25 man guilds will lose people to the 10 man path, and I can see where there's a lot of frustration for 25 man raiders right now.

One bright note about 25 man guilds vs 10 man guilds.. if you lose a couple people in a 25 man guild, you can switch to two 10 man groups until you recruit back to the numbers you need for 25 man. If a 10 man guild loses people, you can potentially be without a full raid group at all.

You have to be honest with yourself, most ppl run 10 mans for ease of access to gear, practice for 25 man encounters and achivements. My off spec is geared out from 10 man raids because i dont get charged GP points for rollng on it. It is extra time spend playing but the reward for doing it in extra gear badgss and achivements compansate for it. If they make 10 man raid on par with 25 by gear there wont be any 10 man runs. Plus the fact of the matter is 25 mans are a hell of a lot harder to put together and keep porductive than 10 mans. So from my perspective as a 25 man progression raider having same gear in 10 man raid will no longer set me apart from other raiders. It will be like in BC every custer was running with that ugly broom, gladiator stuff and complained why Blizzard did not give us more choices. Now You will have either halfe the server running with the same gear or if they do make 10 mans that hard you will have half the server leaving the game. Funny thing is what do you care what a title of this post is, he was clearly posting from a 25 man raiding perspective, if you enjoy running 10 mans or this is the only option for you well rejoyce you now will have same gear options as the 25 man raiders. And if Blizzard does screw up and makes 10 mans easier than you will see big guilds break up into small gangs to run 10 mans and opt out from 25 man progression. You do have to face reallity though, as of today 10 man raids are easier to run because of fight mechanics, easier to organize you just need 9 more and generally considered for the most part more relaxed as all you do if you are , 25 man raider, practice for the big raid, if you dont kill the boss no big deal you got practice and did not get locked out for a 25 man fight.

1. First things first. I want to thank the people who read my post and responded with reason instead of useless and snide comments like "Surprise that this comes from a 25man raider."

I don't have a problem with that disagree with me. I do have a problem that don't back it up with any thought or reason.

2. I was not saying 10man raiders suck, or that 10man strict raiders suck, or that nobody ever has fun with 10mans. I wrote this post in responce to all the comments that said this change is great because 10mans are more fun. Sorry but that is false. 10mans can be just as painful as 25mans and 25mans can be just as fun as 10mans.

I am saying the positives associated with 10mans are not exclusive to 10mans and that many of the negatives of 25mans will transfer to the new 10man progression guilds that form.

3. I won't respond to all of you directly, because a lot of you are saying similar things. Please read all of my comments even if they are not addressed to you directly. I may be responding to your comment as well.

@Marrilaife

I have a lot of respect for "true" 10man strict raiders. On a difficulty level I think it is comparable to 25man progression. 10mans do have some advantages due to room size, but 10mans also have some challenges due to a limited roster.

I think this change is a big boost for real 10man strict guild because it does a lot to ligitimize there activity and the good ones will be great in Cataclysm.

That said, I think a lot of guild that claim to be 10man strict guilds are not entirely honest. I see plenty of people who claim to be 10man strict that have 264 ilevel tier gear without downing a single ICC10 hard mode. These guilds that fudge their statis will have difficulty in Cataclysm because they won't be able to any more. With that, a lot of the issues 10man raiders associate with 25mans will present themselves in their 10mans.

@Fortitude

The only reason you could be offended is if you didn't read my post. As I said above. I have a lot of respect for true 10man strict guilds.

That said, I am not stating my opinion as fact. I'm saying the things that make 10mans fun are not exclusive to 10mans, and the things that make 25mans less fun are not exclusive to 25mans.

Love your comment. I disagree with most of it, but you put thought behind it. That said, here is my rebutal.

Here are the things you listed that you didn't like about 25mans:People beg for summons, excessive AFKs, Not taking stones when they are dropped, excessive chatter over vent, and slackers who don't come prepared.

I agree, all of those things can be a problem in 25mans and I find them annoying as well. However, not a single thing you listed is exclusive to 25mans.

It is my experiance that most 10man groups are built out of an existing 25man group. If your 25man raid has 15 solid players and 10 fail players, who do you pick to be in you 10man group? You of course choose from the 15 good people. That is why you associate more positive things with 10mans and less negative things with 25mans.

Now, what happens when the fifteen solid players in your guild deside to form a 10man guild in Cataclysm.

First off, you're sitting 5 people a night, and most people don't like being stat. Some of them will find a more regular spot in another guild and your solid 15 is now a solid 12. Along the way the inevitable will happen and some of your solid 12 will leave and you have recruit. Sorry, but if you assume all of your recruits will be solid your making a mistake, just like you would be making a mistake if you assumed all of yoru 25man recruits would be solid.

Fail players are not exclusive to 25mans. A lot of 10man groups avoid them because they have experiance from 25mans that allow them to select better players. Once you don't have the larger guild to support your 10man recruiting will be more difficult.

Here are some other of your points I want to address.

Clogged Vent: This is a guild management issue not a size issue. Vent is very clean in my 25mans. Raiders are encouraged to use a chain of command and make suggestions in Chat. Excessive vent conversations are not tolerated. 5 people talking over each other in a 10man is no different then 5 people talking over each other in a 25man.

Loot: Are you saying there won't be loot drama in 10mans. I have plenty of experiance to know that isn't true. We use Need/Greed in our 10mans to, but it primarily works because we need very little gear from the 10mans. Once it becomes the only source of gear there will be greater competition, and people will complain that Johnny just won 3 items, or Timmy has been with the guild a week and got the item when I've been here a year.

In general, most of the negatives you associate with 25man raids I don't experiance in my guild. I may be lucky, but I think that it is superior management. I said in my post that somethings will be easier with 10mans, but everyone seems to be assuming that 10mans are this magical place where everyone gets along and knows how to play, and that 25mans are full of slackers, annoyances, and bad experiances. I'm saying that that just because your 25man experiance is bad doesn't mean its a problem with the format. And just because you've had good experances with 10mans in WotLK doesn't mean they will be all Candy and Roses in Cata.

Blizzard needs to just come up with a way to make encounters and number of loot drops scale with the number of players present. Then if you have 12 people to fill a 10 man raid you can take all 12. If you have 23 players you can take 23.

The difficulty would scale with the number of players. Certain mechanics could appear at a certain threshold. For example, insert mind control mechanic at 20 raiders and above.

With this system, even the 40 player raids could be possible. I'm sure it would have flaws and be difficult at first, but once the kinks were worked out and Blizzard found a way to do it well (and with the money they make they should), then everyone could be happy.

QUOTE: "Taking 10 mans out of the equation means I can sleep when I need to sleep,....."

Someone who can not even manage their own body has little basis for passing judgements on the operations of others. Seriously, it is time to put down the keyboard, look in the mirror, and figure out what impact you have on things that matter in life. Your community, your country, your family, and the health of your own body should take a higher station than a video game.

For me, 25-mans have too much spell flash and confusing crap on the screen. 10's are much cleaner looking. :-)

Very nice post Graylo and you hit it just perfectly. I see a lot of posts from "socials" that QQ how you aren't a 10-man raider so you have no perspective on this issue. I beg to differ with them.

When this change happens, 10's will inherit all of the aggravating things that 25's have now and Blizz is missing the point of having two separate raid types. We use the 10's for gearing and practice for the 25's. We like that 25's are more difficult due to positioning logistics and more boss damage. It simply takes more "oomph" to be good in 25's than in 10's (Sarth 3D notwithstanding) and we get better gear for pushing through that extra difficulty.

Without incentives there will be few, if any, 25's being run in Cata. That's sad. I wish Blizz would stop trying to fix what ain't broke! This is not some giant social experiment and they will NEVER get it perfect. Good enough is what we have now and is truly "good enough".

I'm in a solid CASUAL 25-man raiding guild. We're working on LK starting this week. We only raid 3 hours a night, 3 nights a week. The first night we get all the way to Sindragosa or at least SleepyDragon, one-shotting each boss. The next two nights are for downing the dragon(s) and working on LK. We have several 10-man groups and those are valuable and fun because they are less difficult and less stressful.

My concern is that now everyone will be doing only 10's, the 10's will be MUCH harder than anyone realizes they will be, no one will run 25's because there is no incentive to do so (same gear, harder positioning, etc) and I'm a boomkin with middle-of-the-meter damage output. Why will any guild bring any "utility" spec to a 10-man which already has such tight output requirements? Ele shammys you should be concerned too, as well as ret pallys, etc. This is a step backwards imo and will bring yet more homogenization to this already-generic-feeling game.

What is the problem that Blizz is trying to fix with this change? WHY combine raid id's?? Answer: they have no desire to create enough content to keep everyone happy for a year until the next release and they need an artificial method to slow down progression. They CERTAINLY have the resources and could hire more designers to get it done.

That, in a nutshell, is the issue Blizz is so disingenuously targetting. Weekly boss attempt caps apparently wasn't enough, as we know from a blue post about how they didn't intend for multiple guild alts being created, sometimes on other realms, to get past attempt caps.

Why not Blizz? Why not let us play the game the way WE want to? WE'RE the ones paying for it after all. Any frankly you make enough money already to keep your shareholders deliriously happy. 40's were very fun. Soon we'll be saying "25's were very fun". Where will it stop?

@ Graylo - I have to disagree with your view on this one. I summed up my response in my post on my blog but I won't rehash that here. It is obvious you have a passion for 25's and that comes through to most as elitism when it is not. I think you might have missed the mark on this one though.

I have been in a fail guild who was not strict, and some players were really flaky on even showing up. There was no pride in being in that guild except for the core friends within that guild. I had joined another guild who was really strict on loot, attendance, catching players messing up over and over on the same things and teaching them how to do it. We have successful icc25's each week clearing everything except for the LK.

I believe it all goes down to a few basic things which 10's and 25's are based upon. The individual, how much initiative they are willing to put out to adapt. Discipline how they have trained themselves to play their character and their response in fights. And Teamwork, how organized are they at completing the task at hand. We really do not do 10 mans, no one needs it and people are still carried through 25 man who are undergeared.

Imo the game is easy enough, to warrant 10 mans dropping the same loots. 10 mans having 25 man geared people there will not be any challenges, hardships or struggles. I mean hell they have gone as far as giving tier loot out purchasable by emblems. Guilds should not be having a problem filling 25 slots for players, didn't the player base go up a bunch since BC? I have never had a problem with anything 10 man content, and if blizzard gears the game that way well I will have to choose another.

I can provide one explanation for why you got so many responses: your post has an inaccurate (and in my opinion, inflammatory) title. You say 10-mans are not fun when they are. If they weren't, no one would play the game.

I follow and mostly agree with your argument about 10 mans. They are not inherently more relaxed, and they are not inherently more casual; they are more successful, and in my opinion success is equivalent to fun. On the other hand, I think you are delving into a huge gray area asserting that the tensions that arise 25-man will translate to 10-man in Cataclysm. It's a complex question of social networking: imagine the players are nodes and there are lines connecting each of them to the other representing their social interactions. In a 10 man, there are 55 such lines, while in a 25 man there are 300 such lines. There are almost 6 times as many avenues for drama in a 25 man, but only 2.5 times more people. This larger network however might be more resilient to frayed links. Take one disgruntled player; in a 25 man, they have poisoned 24/300 links (8%) versus 9/55 links (16.3%) in a 10man. If I were to suppose that these effects cancel themselves out (or I could wave my hands again and say you are 2.5 times more likely to get a disgruntled player in 25s and say 16.3/8 is less than 2.5, but I won't), then we're left with one argument in 10man's favor: it is easier, thanks to probability, for a single player to find 9 other good players than it is to find 24 (and I would venture to guess it's easier to find 9 great players than 24 good but not great players). Because of this, 10mans are inherently more successful and thus inherently more fun.

I could not disagree with you more strongly... I lost a lot of respect for you and your blog today. Just stick to the gear scores and numbers (something actually factual based and that you are adept at), and keep your biased 25man fanboy opinions to yourself.

Ever since Kara and ZA I have prefered smalled teams, as the individual skill is more relevant and impacting, and I generally have a boat load more fun with my buddies doing 10s than dealing with all the drama and coordination of 25s. And trust me I know my stuff I have been playing WoW since its inception and a year prior in beta/F&F alpha. 40s were the pits having to carry tons of baddies all the time. Only raid I enjoyed in 40 era was BWL and that was because of the fights not taking 40 people. ZG was my first love for smaller formats, and 20 was really fun in there but still felt too damn zergy. Kara won me over and so did ZG, and even though I cleared all BC content in 25s, I was still dealing with all kinds of recruiting and leadership drama there.

I prefer playing with a few other skilled players in a group I can control and manage easily thus allowing me to spend less RL time on the game and still see skilled raid play with a small squad of friends. Just because you obviously Prefer and have a bias towards 25s (probably because you happen to have a solid squad atm and don't want to feel like others can achieve what you do with a smaller team and less drama/coordination) does not mean your opinion above is correct. It stinks of fanboy-ism and had nothing relevant or factual.

I will probably only use your blog for gear info now so I dont have to waste time doing the math, and ignore everything else you have to say you obviously cannot separate fact from opinion and are like one of those apple fanboys I despise at the mac store.

This post probably lost you half or more of your userbase... congrats.

Basically you are saying that over gearing leads to ease which is why you believe 10s are fun.

Incorrect assumption my friend. I did Kara straight out of heroics in blues and we were like server second to clear it. I did Bear mounts with 10 when it was hard with mostly appropriate gear, and loved the challenge of it (one of the harder events ever in the game, harder than when I was clearing BWL originally in 40s and harder than and 25 I have cleared since, except possibly Sunwell due to the coordination needed mostly.

Some of us that do 10s like a more close knit intimate group. We dont like loot and coordination drama. We dont want to waste time with 25 people having all kinds or RL distractions and internet issues. But the biggest thing you missed is some of us that do 10s actually enjoy a challenge, and don't just want to overpower the instance and get easy gear.

What is really going on here is you favor 25s and are feeling your perfect guild synergy and accomplishments threatened since now 10 skilled players can do exactly what you do with half the playtime and actually having more of a RL.

As someone who took a hiatus from WoW due to the progression wall that was Zul'Aman without 25 man gear. It is my opinion that 10's are not inherently more fun.

Yet I prefer the format in Wrath. Sarth 3D (10) was the hardest test of 10 man raiding groups in 3.0 .. and no 10 man only raiding group I am aware of acheived it before they had the tier up from Ulduar. If Blizzard tunes 10 mans at Sarth 3D difficulty and 25's at Naxx 10 difficulty, 25's will be more popular.

Quite frankly, at the end of the day the sky will not fall. People will raid and have fun. They will choose the format and raid schedule that works for them. If Blizzard makes mistakes, they will hotfix or patch them. (Marrowgar untauntable + threat wipe lasted how long?) Your goal as a player should be "figure out how to have fun". Blizzard's goal is "figure out how to build more places for people to have fun in our game." No one's perfect and plans and reality don't always mesh perfectly, but the goals of both parties should be compatible for years to come.

But that seems like his point.. people have been raving about how much "fun" 10 mans in WotlK when, in reality, they're simply must easier for most groups.

Of course Karazhan and ZA were tough when they came out, but that would only refute Graylo's post if a substantial amount of people TODAY who claim that 10 mans are "fun" would have found KZ and ZA fun when they were progression raids.

This is obviously not easily quantifiable, but I'd wager most people who have "fun" slicing through ICC10 decked out in 264 epics from the first wing of ICC25 would probably find the KZ or ZA progression fairly grueling.

I really only have one problem with what you and most people are saying. You are not separating guilds by their size. You are categorically lumping all the legitimate guilds who run 10 mans only in with the guilds who run 10 mans in their off time.

When you say "10 mans are not fun" you should be saying "10 mans are not fun for the 25 man raider".

When you say "10 mans are so easy, you 10 man raiders will get a shock of reality that all us real 25 man raiders have had to deal with all this time" you should be saying "people who like running 10 mans with people who are geared in 25 man loot will get a shock of reality that those who run content as it was intended have had to deal with all this time".

It's not what you're saying, it's how you're saying it that comes across as rude and elitist. I'm sorry if others may agree with you, but you are being insensitive to the people who read this blog. They are all raiders who strive to beat difficult content. Whether that is 10 or 25 makes no difference.

You are making a very dangerous distinction here by saying that 10 mans are an easy playground for people in 264 gear, when the fact is most people who are reading this are either 10 man guilds without the "help" of a 25 man guild or 25 man guilds that are running 10 mans on top of their 25 man runs.

The way a "strict 10 man" guild is categorized is a pretty useless argument at this point because the distinction will be gone soon. But many 10 man guilds were killing marrowgar the first week in their 232 normal/245 heroic gear despite the fact that the boss was doing 25 man damage. Many guilds were downing the later bosses that were poorly tuned for 10 mans (rotface and blood prices come to mind) and remained that way for some time.

Perhaps once the expansion hits us 10 man raiders will finally be free of the bias and persecution at the hands of elitist propaganda such as this. If you want to be elitist, you should focus on the guilds who are just now starting to get to the lich king. 15% buff to everyone is a far bigger advantage than a few 264 pieces.

Yes, my title was probably a mistake. I thought my point would be obvious after people read the post. On the contrary, people either didn’t get my point or refused to ready my post after the title. That said, I don’t think my title is inaccurate given the context of the post, but it guaranteed to be misunderstood without the context of the post. Therefore it is definitely inflammatory. My title should have been 10mans are not inherently fun.

Oh well, lessons learned. Some people don’t care what you write, just what the title is.

Quote: “then we're left with one argument in 10man's favor: it is easier, thanks to probability, for a single player to find 9 other good players than it is to find 24 (and I would venture to guess it's easier to find 9 great players than 24 good but not great players). Because of this, 10mans are inherently more successful and thus inherently more fun.”

I disagree. I do think it is easier to find and organize 9 players then it is to find and organize 24 players. However, I think you are making a leap when you assume it is easier to find good or great players.

Lets assume for a second that there are 5 25man guilds on the server. Each has 20 “good” players and 5 “fail” players that make the 25man format unpleasant for the other 20. What is preventing the 100 “good” players from reforming into 4 guilds with out any “fail” players? In my opinion the bonds and friendships we form with our guildies are the main things that prevent this kind consolidation.

Now, what happens if 10mans all of a sudden equal 25mans in terms of difficulty and Epeen measurement? I’m sure there would be a huge proliferation of 10man guilds all fighting for the people that want to run 10mans. People will come, and people will go, and eventually those “fail” players will work their way into the 10man guilds. So instead of having 20 “good” players and 5 “fail” players, you now have 8 “good” players and 2 “fail” players.

I agree that I am speculating into a gray area. I may be 100% wrong. However a lot of people seem to think that they can pick up their current 10man groups and drop them into Cataclysm and everything will work the same. I’m sorry but that is completely irrational. Some groups will make the transition perfectly but main won’t and all the things they loved about their 10man group before will be gone.

This post initially riled me up as a 10-man strict raider. My guild does meet the GuildOx requirement and I haven't a 25-man ICC kill my credit.

But I can see your point. I think a lot of people mistaken 10-mans for being easy, but it's really due to overgearing it. When people find out it's just as hard as doing 25-man content in appropriate gear I think there will be some eye-opening.

Existing 10-man strict guilds will just carry on as we're currently doing, but people who are used to 25-mans and just want the smaller group for less hassle might find things more difficult than they expected.

I do think 10s are inherently more relaxed/casual though. Maybe not for the average raider, but as the raid/guild leader, 9 other cats are easier to herd than 24.

Exactly. I think the current 10man strict guilds will thrive under this format. They are already used to the challenge provided by 10man strict raiding and will see little change. Raiders who do both 25mans and 10mans and find 10mans more relaxing, casual and fun, are in for a rude awakening.

If you value the challenge then you can find your reward in either 25man or 10man. If you only value the success, then 10mans won’t provide you with the easier validation because you over gear the content.

I agree with your basic assessment, Graylo. Although I'm coming from the point of view of a 25-player raider, I don't see any reason why 10's would be intrinsically more fun than 25's. I know a lot of 25 raiders do 10's for fun and one reason they perceive the raids as "fun" or "relaxing" is because there is less at stake: their virtual self-worth is organized around their 25-player progression instead of their 1-player progression, they have 30+ players to draw upon to put together a 10-player raid, and they typically out-gear the encounters except in situations where the tuning is off-balance.

But, if you remove those buffers, 10's pose the same challenges that can make 25's so stressful: balancing raid comp, dealing with rosters, dealing with real life absences, dealing with disagreeable people, dealing with noise in vent, dealing with unprepared players or players who are not as invested as you might be in progression, etc.

Can 10's be as challenging as 25's? Having 1 Malleable Goo instead of 2 has the potential to make things easier in 10's, but Blizzard can certainly scale things to create a challenge, as we saw with Sarth 3D for 10's. As you noted, doing Sarth + 3 on 25 was much, much easier in 25 than in 10. Will they take the time to test the balance the encounters fully across both raid formats? I don't know.

You say 10 mans are easy/fun because people out gear the content from day 1. Well maybe they'll make the cata raids that way. Maybe your 25 mans will be dumbed down, not the other way around.

WoW is a business. They're going to appeal to the masses. Most people want to get loot quickly and easily, so that's what WoW will deliver imo. I think hard modes will be reserved for the small portion like yourself, Graylo.

I know that AFKers and slackers are not exclusive to 25s, but the problem is greatly reduced in 10s because you don't feel that you need to carry anyone. It may be different for you on a bigger server - but on my Oceanic PVE server, recruitment isn't easy and sometimes you just have to have warm bodies in. When we were a 10 man guild, it was different.

Clogged vent: it's not just a management issue. I can keep vent clear if I tell people to be quiet; that's not the issue. I was talking more about being able to chat casually between pulls; if a 25man group chats casually between pulls there are a lot more people trying to join in, it becomes a mess, and we have to call for vent to be clear. That's not fun. In a 10 man, there's more room for chatting.

And loot - we used need/greed in our 10 mans when our guild was ONLY running 10 mans - when we needed everything from 10 mans. That's a little different to running 10 mans on the side and not needing much from it at all.

To be honest I was offended by your comment that my problems in 25mans might be due to inferior management. My management is fine. My guild is fine. My experience with 25s is not "bad". I am merely listing the differences between 25s and 10s and why 10s are more relaxed and fun.

The fact is, 10 mans are more fun for me for the reasons I listed. And some of them ARE due specifically to the size of the group.

Problems may not be entirely exclusive to 25mans, but they were very obviously reduced when we were a 10 man guild.

10 mans are faster (not referring to boss kills being easier - I mean faster loot, less mucking around), more friendly and personal due to the small size, and less frustrating to me because of the reduced need to "carry" people.

It has nothing to do with my management of 25s. It is simply a product of the reduced size, and the freedoms that this reduced size allows the group.

For further clarification, my guild was exclusively a 10 man guild for months, during TOC.

I'm not just talking about running 10s concurrently with 25s. I'm talking from experience running a "10 man guild".

So when you say "what happens when people quit your guild" - I already know what it is like to run a 10 man guild and have to recruit for a 10 man team. My comments about not carrying slack warm bodies stands. From experience.

I am formally from a 10 man strict guild and moved to 25 mans starting in ulduar, i know first hand what graylo is saying. With Algalon on 10 man, we were just as stressful with each other, and at times more harsh because it's so individually important compared to Yogg on 25 man. At times, my 25 man were more fun, and at times, my 10 man was more fun.

Overall, I've had more fun in 10 mans, simply because we've been more successful. I highly disapprove the change, as well.

In one of my posts on the Blizz forums, I listed the positives and negatives to everything. I like to do this to give perspective on what good and bad things will happen, in both reguards to 10 and 25 man raids.

I suggest everyone try this, objectively. Think about what good things and bad things will happen to each raid size.

I agree 100% with what Graylo is saying, and even with that, if you don't agree, go over other positives and negatives. Either way I look at my final outcome, 25 mans are simply not going to be favorable in any context compared to 10 mans.

Some guy said you should be able to do both 10 and 25, but only get loot and emblems from 1 of them. I don't know about anyone else, but this to me sounds great. I get to still raid with my friends, push 10 man content, get extra practice, and not have anything more advantage than anyone else gear wise.

I rather not have a "25 man toon" and a "10 man toon" for Cata, me like most people, want a main toon.

That said I still don't see how your comment applys to my arguement. How are "slack warm bodies" purely a problem of 25man raids. Why are 10mans immune to this issue?

My 25man does not have "slack warm bodies." If a trial doesn't perform, they don't get invited to be a raider. If a raider starts to under perform, the officers confront them about the issue and try to correct it.

It sounds like you did an affective job managing your 10man roster. Therefore your 10man experance was more fun then your 25man experiance. I get that. However, will that continue with the proliferation of 10man strict guilds that surface in Cata? Maybe, maybe not.

I think what we all need to take away from this is that there has been a serious imbalance in the game when it comes to raid size, raid progression and gear. There also is an inherent difference between guilds that are composed of mostly in life friends or longtime online friends, and groups composed of people that have no friendship bond at all and are only playing the game with strangers. These are not exclusive to 10s or 25s just as Graylo said wisely.

In Cataclysm, these differences will become less pronounced. Some people like the profound differences, others hate them. There are advantages on both sides as well as problems to be dealt with. Overall these will also become more homogenized.

I really do still believe that 25 man raiding, although not completely, will change from the form it is now into something else like guild allegiences.

Right now, a character can only belong to one guild. That guild can do any content it wishes, and pressures ingame tend to make people want to do the 25 man content based on better gear, as long as you can get capable players and leadership and management.

I'd like to see a different heirarchy. I think all guilds should only inherently be able to to 10 man content by themselves without any direct access to the 25 man path. To get access to the 25 man path, you'd have to have at least 3 other guilds join up a charter to form an Allegience which would unlock the 25 man path and can only be done with the allegience guilds and no others.

This structure would be the best of both worlds from 10s and 25s as they now stand. You would get the smaller group feel, commradery and training from your guild, then when you are ready you can join an allegience and participate in the 25 man content, which by this system would comprise of three groups of people with higher skill and higher probability of working together in a mature manner and increase the probability of success.

The other way I could see things going would be that when a guild is created, it has to choose a path, either 10 man or 25 man, but not both. To supplement this change, you would have to allow characters to be able to join two guilds. They can join one 10 man guild and one 25 man guild, but not two of the same type. That way you could train up in the smaller 10 man guild and then join a 25 man guild and do that content as well.

I just think people are overreacting based on their feelings and personal experiences, but not on the hard cold facts of the game and where Blizzard wants to go with the game for the benefit of all players, not just different groups of people at several diverging progression and gear paths.

Everyone should take a deep breath and relax and see how things really are in Cataclysm when it comes out.

It's hard to be concise at 6am. I'll try to sum up my thoughts properly now that I've woken up more.

For reference, I have been a 40 man raider, then a 10, then 25 "hardcore", then 10, now 25 again.

Your point is that problems with raiding are not limited to 25man raids, and if people shift to 10man raiding, the problems will transfer over.

I completely agree with you that the problems are not exclusive to 25mans. I understand that 10 mans are not immune to the problems listed. Absolutely.

But my point is that with the reduced size, those problems are DRAMATICALLY reduced, to the point of being non-issues. And this makes running 10 mans a lot more fun and hassle-free than running 25s.

When my guild was a 10 man only guild, it basically ran itself. There was no need for someone to "lead" raids, for example. We just raided. It was glorious. And it just doesn't seem to work that way with 25s - you have to have at least one person herding the group. W

And as for vent/loot - yes, there will always be idiots on vent, and there's nothing stopping the group from dragging loot out to 30 minutes of frustration. But in my experience, the problems are greatly reduced. The reduced number of people on vent means more flexibility to chat casually. This has nothing to do with poor management of vent during 25s - it's purely that you can't have a full 25man raid chatting between pulls without things eventually getting into a mess. I love chatting on vent during trash, but it's just not something that you can really do in 25s.

10 man raids are NOT immune to 25man problems. I agree.

But the reduced size of the 10 man raid allows for more intimacy, which in turn makes them more fun. This is my actual experience, not just conjecture.

Seriously people, read past the title and the first paragraph and comment on his content. The man took the time to write out a thoughtful, informed post, which does not come across as elitist at all. I think most people will be startled at the changes when cataclysm hits the shelves and people see this stuff in practice.

Thanks for the response. I wanted to add that I read your title, was irked, read the post with the intent of disagreeing, started writing a response, and in formulating that response realized that most of what you wrote was right. It helped me pare away all the reasons I thought 10-man was better but then left me one final point I couldn't dispel from my mind: 10-mans will be more successful because it involves a shorter pathway to success. That doesn't make it more fun, but it makes it inherently easier to achieve fun (totally different, and voila, I think that dissolves my last disagreement with your original argument). It's a subject not so clear cut (fraught with variables, rather), so whether it is true will have to be determined in time. I had my reasoning, but I believe it at this point on instinct, and can not be convinced otherwise. I suspect it's the fear lurking in most people's minds when they object to the raid changes. It's the cloud that hangs over the future of 25-man raiding, and I sincerely hope my 25-man guild can survive it.

I do surmise, however, that the "community" will still respect 25-man kills more than 10-man kills as far as progression goes.

Hey Graylo, long time reader first time commenter. Really, I think this is more of a comment to most of the other comments as many of them show a very large 10 man bias. I apologize in advance about the length, I just had a lot to say. >.>

To be honest, I completely agree with you. I think a lot of people are completely confused about the degree of “fun” between 10 and 25 man raids. The sense of fun that all people talk about when they compare 10 and 25 man raids is one of their social experiences within the group. As someone who was strict 10 man raiding for the first half of this expansion and just more recently switched to 25 man let me just say that anyone who thinks that 10 mans are naturally more fun are completely wrong.

In terms of raiding there are three types of fun that occur: the fun from the difficulty of the encounter, the fun from the social experience, and the fun from obtaining loot. In terms of the difficulty of the encounters, I would say that they are very similar (as long as you are appropriately geared). There is an added difficultly of the 10 man being more crippled when they lose a single raid member compared to the 25 man, but usually this seems to be outweighed by additional or harder mechanics in the 25 mans (MC, more malleable goo, and so on). There have been instances of the tuning between the two different raid sizes flipping in directions such as OS 10 3D being much, much harder than its 25 man counterpart and I would argue that ToC 10 was way under tuned compared to the 25 man version (although they were both pretty laughable).

Socially, 10 mans are also not instantly more fun. Socially, I have to say that I’m having as much fun in my current 25 man guild as I did back in my 10 man guild. If you are in a guild were you generally like everyone else in it, you are going to have fun. If you are in a group where you don’t like people in it, you aren’t. For example, I was in a 10 man group for a while and I couldn’t stand 4 out of the 10 people in the group. They would clutter up the vent channel with their mindless drivel and none of them were very good at playing either and thus would get carried through a lot of the content (also leading to why that group could never get Yogg down). What I have described is the exact same problems that many people list as their main complaint as to why people like 10 mans over 25 mans and claim that they are immune to these problems. Just because they personally have not had the experience does not mean that it is not possible. Now, looking at my 25 man guild currently, I have none of these problems, vent isn’t full of drivel and people talking over each other and when the conversation begins getting even a bit out of hand the officers are there to shut it down. Additionally, we really aren’t carrying anyone, most people down just AFK during trash and there is a high level of respect and friendship between the guild members. I would say that my social experience with my 25 man guild has actually, in many ways been better than the social experience with many of the 10 man groups I’ve been in.

Lastly comes fun from obtaining gear. In this category this is fun from A. Getting new gear B. Getting really good gear C. Getting really cool gear. The first of these is just the act of getting new gear. While to some this isn’t the most exciting avenue when it comes to these different types of gear collecting fun, some people are just easily satisfied, especially when it comes to replacing long overdue pieces (such as when I finally upgraded from Sundial to the Spyglass). Someone merely concerned with the act of acquiring upgrades is not going to be too concerned when it comes to the difference between 10 and 25 mans, as long as they got an upgrade, they are happy. Then comes the act of getting really good gear. By really good gear, I mean like BiS stuff. Right now there is a terrible split in this category because the vast majority of BiS gear comes from 25s and thus people who are concerned only with getting the best gear they can for their characters can’t have fun unless they run 25s (and 10s for the few items that still remain better than the 25 man ones). This problem will be solved in Cata with the two raid sizes sharing gear so it will no longer be an issue for deciding fun. The way of fun coming from 25 mans is obtaining cool items. This is a very personal identification as sometimes what items are “cool” are not thought so as universal (for example I still consider my Wraith Strike to be the coolest item made this whole expansion), but some items such as special mounts and vanity items that come from raids can be put into this category. As Blizzard even stated, they haven’t decided on what to do with these yet in Cata and so their scale in “fun” can’t really be said yet.

Fun and YouI really can’t tell people what is fun and what isn’t fun. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some people considered some of these categories to be negative fun. The weights of each type of fun is subjective for each person and thus each individual has to make their own choice as to what is fun and not. The categories that I mentioned and also not the only ones that can be taken into account with considering raid fun, I just mentioned the ones that are primarily related between the different raid sizes to which and pretty much, as far as we know, going to be relatively equal as to what is going to be offered.

The Internet and YouWorld of Warcraft is full of many types of people. Some are good kind nice people that play the game with skill and people like grouping up with others fall into categories such as elitists, loot whores, baddies, loud obnoxious annoyances, and just general jerks. If someone takes a cut of 10 random people from the game they are bound to get at least one of one of these types most of the time. With a 10 man group is far easier to keep these types out, but on the other hand with 25 man groups they are far easier to find their way into the raid roster. But this doesn’t mean that every single 25 man group is full of these people and the 10 mans are not. From my experience, there are many of the same person troubles within both 10 and 25 man groups.

TLDR1. People should stop trying to create definitive fun scales to hold everyone to because they concept of fun is subjective.

2. There are jerks in both raid size groups, so people should stop thinking like they don’t exist in 10 mans.

I think it is dependent on the environment and raid make up for each individual. I think it is not necessary for the readers to rant. :p

I raid on my moonkin in a progression 25s guild. A disciplined bunch of people who comes prepared with everything that is expected from a raider 3 times a week 3 hours each time.

And i raid weekends on an alt in a different realm with a bunch of mates and their (inherently small-ish) guild for 10s.

TBH, I've known these mates for a good 20yrs and there is a great camadarie in raiding together because of (i believe) muture understanding. However, I enjoy raiding more on my 25s progression runs more despite so many more nonsense to take... QQs to bear with, and watsnots. There are so many reasons if i were to really state them out.

I think the upcoming change will be good for 10s who don't raid 25s for so many various reasons but as a person who enjoys my 25s, i'm really quite apprehensive on this change.

I really have to say I'm surprised at the level of QQ from supposed "10" players, to thoughts in the community that differ from theirs... considering how they level QQ they have stated at "25" players.

I fully believe, that the purpose isn't for the raid community... but to lower development efforts. It's not for you that they are doing it... it's so it can cost less to produce content.

Most cases, this type of action backfires... It lowers the quality of the game and has been generally one of the things Blizzard has been above in years past.

My bet at this time... is the 10s will praise it... 25s will die off and in about 8 - 12 weeks you'll have a large die off of players that get bored. Either content is now too hard for the casuals or there is no challenge/reward to keep them occupied. If every 25 is carrying 6-8 people in their guild. Inflated for those that are subbing in, then that's an awful lot of people that will either A. Not be in a viable 10 man. Or B. Not be raiding since more raiders will gravitate towards 10s being able to pick and choose.

... At what point do you say that the 5 Man ICC instances together are not a raid? ... How much different is a 10 man vs 5 man.

The worst thing is to get what you wish for... and find out it's not what you really wanted.

For the 10s strict... if you are strict, then you should not really care about what the 25s do. If anything,... they should create 10 man strict realms, just as you have PVP realms and RP realms. It should not be that hard to implement.

You know, on my server, all the super progressed 25man guilds and the strict 10man guilds are excited about this change. It's all the guys in between us who are worried.

And, justifiably so. The super progressed 25 guilds are excited about more challenge with less raiding time (this is taken from a forum discussion). The strict 10s are super excited that we no longer have to take an itemization hit to play the way we like. Also, we won't have to continually justify why we don't want to do 25s and why we ban our raiders from wearing 25 gear.

What I honestly hadn't considered is something this post reminded me. I was a GL/RL of a 25man then 40man guild pre-BC, a 10man then 25man then 10man guild in BC (more or less, TK/SSC broke my will to lead 25s), and now a strict 10man guild. The people we "washed" out of the guild in BC were all the people who wanted to do 25s. What we had left were the people who loved the challenge of a place like ZA in only Kara and badge gear. So, we were a natural fit for strict 10man raiding. I think that the legitimacy this change makes for our playstyle is very welcome in the guild.

As this debate has unfolded, the number of people having to diminish in value playing as a 10-man strict to voice their complaints about the proposed change has been pretty obnoxious. Particularly because most of the 10man stricts I know have been very careful to frame what we do as not "better" than 25s, but rather just a different set of choices about how we play. And, most of us believe that we are as serious as raiders as progressing 25 guilds--a belief that this change will certainly test.

But, not contextualizing this change in respect to pre-Wrath 10mans and the way it framed my thinking at least also might explain why my guildmates and I have been so incredibly offended by the way people characterize the way we play--something that might be generalizable considering people here's reaction to your blog. And, to be very honest, my own, until I read your responses to comments.

Anyway, thank you for this insight. I am an avid reader of your blog as I am a "switch hitter" in my guild--I run Resto til we drop a healer and then I'm moonkin.

I think 10 man raids are more relaxing.- less people to roll on your loot- you've got a better overview of what's going on in the raid -> better for raid leaders- less chaos

At the moment I do 10 man raids only to come further and further and clear the way for heroics and gain experience needed for 25 and not for items at all. I just don't need any from 10 man(except heroic mode).

i agree with you completely i loved kara (and never got into za more than a couple times...

the thing that bugs me most about all the pre cata hype and angst is that the shit hasnt even hit the fan yet and everyones worried...

personally i think this change is going to be good...especially considering that blizz is going to be prepared to change things (they said if it didnt work out that it would be fixed by 4.1, and fixed probably wont mean going back to how wotlk is)...also personally i have a lot more faith in blizz than other people do, but thats just me...

theyre going to test the content and ten mans are not going to be the walk in the park that they usually are now...you can single heal toc and run it like a heroic...thats just ridiculous when its only one content patch behind icc...

who knows, 25 mans might be easier than ten because there wont be any 25 loot to carry you through the ten man...and i do understand that the biggest complaint is finding 25 people...i know its hard, ive put those raids together too...

All of you people whom are offended by his perspective piece really need to take a step back and realize you are acting like 5 year old children.

I have to agree with him. I raid in a top 400 guild as a Balance druid, then raid in a 10-man only guild on my warlock 1 day a week. There is not one person who has not stepped foot into a 25-man pug (VOA or otherwise). You guys say you have the feeling of teamwork and like being with friends, but for me that's 25man. Out of our core 30 raiders, 22 of us live in the same city and know each other IRL. Personally I think that what you feel makes your ten-mans more fun, could easily be said for 25-mans if you found a better situation. As a result I am insulted as to how ignorant all the drama queen posters are.

Gray, it was a well conveyed post; sorry you can't make them all happy -- Most people are sheep waiting for a slaughter.

I think it was a very good post and had some excellent thoughts, however I think your going to be wrong on one aspect. If one thing can be said about WotLK it's that raiding has become LOT easier than TBC. Your thoughts are generally based on the assumption that 10mans will be harder because of worse gear.

Their are a lot of guilds that would have done the Algalon and ToGC 10man achievements that restricted gear level and probably did them easily, I know my 10man team had a hunter using Thoridal becasue he didn't have another appropriate bow. It is very possible that rather than 10mans being harder because of worse gear that 25 and 10 mans will be relatively easier and by extension 10mans stay as easy and 25 mans become even easier than current.

I did enjoy doing 10 mans at the start of this expansion though. I started the expansion in a 10 man only guild that was all a group of friends from previous guilds that had gotten fed up with the whole raiding scene drama and bought into what Blizz said about parallel progression. The problem was 25 mans offered such better loot and were so incredibly easy that shortly after clearing all content and doing sarth 1D the majority of people in the group wanted to do the 25 mans for the better rewards so the guild split up and joined 25 man guilds.

If the equal gear and equal difficulty had been there at the start of wotlk I think there's a good chance our group would have stayed together and had a lot more fun this expansion. But there was the feeling by many in the group of a "need" to do 25 mans.

Now it probably won't be the same group of 10 people I started wotlk with, but I think if blizzard succeeds with their vision I will end up raiding 10 mans again. I'm much more confident I can find 10-12 people that I enjoy playing with than the current 25 man raiding where a good number of the people I would just assume mute/ignore.

Hi Gray,I don't usually post but I wanted to weigh in and say... I agree with you. Especially your reflection on Kara and ZA. Those were fantastic instances that really provided a challenge. But Kara was where the badges/emblems were at - people ran it even when they were bored stupid with the place.

Unfortunately I think a lot of 10 man only raiders will be very upset at the idea that most of the people running 10 man ICC and the like are in 25 man raiding guilds. Understand where you're coming from, though. Keep writing!

'Mostly I resent the concept that you flat out state your opinion as fact:

"10mans are not fun."

That's your opinion, not fact. You're usually good about keeping those two separate. '

Quoted for emphasis. You can't state an opinion as fact, and you can't use your experience - '10 mans are easy because I outgear them in a primarily 25 man raider' - as fact for the entire wow player base.

I'm a primary 10 man raider who has started to see more 25's in guild (I have no patience for pugs and I'm not going to ditch friends to see 'more content' when I can see it on 10 man with people I don't want to stab in the eye with an icicle).

It's disapointing because a lot of your post has some good points - there *is* nothing in inherent in the 10 man format that makes it easier/more fun/relaxed then 25's, I agree with that. But to say people like it simply because they outgear it is ignorant at best.

I agree that the reason 10mans are more "fun" is because you can goof off, slack off, and relax more... because they're easier. What I don't agree with... is the assumption that they'll actually be able to make 10mans equally difficult to 25s. I think they're inherently easier.

For example, look at Putricide. There's all the same abilities, really... but there's 1 goo instead of 2. That ONE difference, makes PP on 10man incredibly easier. Having only 1 goo on 25-man would make the mechanic almost trivial. Having 2 goos on 10man would make it more difficult. The reason 2 goos are more difficult is 1) you can take both of them & go splat 2) you have to watch two separate things in addition to whatever you were doing in the first place--be it dpsing, healing, etc. 25-mans will always have the same bosses and same abilities as 10man, but more of it. The fact that you have to pay attention to more things at once makes 25-mans inherently more difficult. If Blizz can make it happen, more power to them. But I think they're either going to continue with 10mans being easier, or overtune 10mans so much that they're way more difficult.

I totally agree with the subject of this post: "10mans are not (inherently more) fun than (than 25mans)"

But...my reply has two "subjects" and they're toally my opinion and nothing else.

"25mans are usually less enjoyable then 10man"

Imo they are less enjoyable b/c of the problems the size of the group creates (many good points stated in previous posts). There's no easy fix for this, only great effort and management skills can fix it. Usually more than peeps can handle, or when they can, they usually use those skills in RL.

"most current 10man content is to easy b/c you often outgear the encounter"

This one's a lot easier to fix. And blizz says that they will give it a go. This makes me a happy panda! 10mans tuned for (what now is) 25man gear (undoubtly a lot more to it but...)

TL;DR version

It's a lot easier to adapt the game to us hormonedriven bipedals than the other way around

I'm coming in a bit late to this, but I'll throw my 2 cents in anyway.

Speaking only for myself and for my guild, I find we consistently have between 12 and 18ish raiders we can count on. What does this mean?

I means that in a 25-man format I can expect people not prepared, and wipes due to the 'filler' making mistakes. This is not fun for me at all.

So, why is a 10-man format exciting for my situation? I (and the other regulars) don't mind a challenge. In fact, it makes things more fun to work for it a little bit. But, with a 10-man (again, for my guild) at least I can count on the others. I know they'll be learning the fight and performing. I know a wipe is something to be learned from. And I know progress will be made. I get none of this from our 25-mans because the same idiot that stood in the fire last time will do it again.

Without reading through all the comments, here's the part about 10-mans that you missed: it is far easier to find a core of 10 players who have similar ability levels, goals, and values, and have compatible personalities than it is to gather 25 players that you can say the same about. And it's easier to get the 10 to commit to each other.

This is the reason my friends and have come to prefer 10-mans, and it *is* an inherent property of the 10-man format.

Graylo! This is a far cry from your usually well thought out and well researched posts. While you definitely make a lot of valid points on why 10s are easier than 25s, you are coming from the PoV of a 25 raider who does 10s on the side. You completely ignore the community of strict 10 man raiders out there who do NOT approach new content with gear from 25man previous tier.

There's a small but growing community of us who don't do current progression 25 content. And it's frustrating to see 25man geared people faceroll hard fights and then laugh at you because you're struggling... because they're actually difficult when you don't outgear them.

I did the 25man raiding thing all through BC and through T9 in WotLK. I enjoy progression raiding, but I got tired of all the drama, and carrying 10-12 terrible players every night. Switching to a progression-oriented strict 10 man raiding guild lets me enjoy the game but still have a bit of a challenge.

All in all, I think you should have chatted with some people from strict 10 man guilds to learn about our organization and what raiding is like for us before posting. Again, I don't think everything you said is blatantly wrong - I agree with a lot of it - but there is also a lot of info you're not privy to in a 25 man progression guild.

Nice post - I think you're very right about the 10 preference (in enjoyment) now is based more on the untangibles than anything else.

I sitll beleive 10's will maintain that key requirement: ease of organisation and formation. I think you cna truely get some stand out players showing up in 10's, that can be hidden some what in 25's. It's much easier to find, and run with 9 others than find 20+ more like that - also, ones that suit your time frames.

Aren't you in a 10 man raiding guild? What's with this hating on 10 mans?I have a toon that raids with a 25 man guild and my Moonkin is in a 10 man raiding guild currently. They are slightly different but i don't think there is a need to harsh one or the other.

10mans are more fun for myself mainly because I don't have to hear 24 other people talk on vent. Honestly, those guys all think they have something ELSE useful to say about Festergut. Really guys? REALLY?!

I don't think that your post is entirely wrong, but I think that you have a tendency to selectively omit things and exaggerate others to suit your opinion.

An example of this is when you mentioned that boss mechanics happen more often in 25 man. The flaw in that statement is that you kinda ignored the fact that there are more than twice as many people in a 25 man raid. If the mechanic happened the same amount of times as it did in 10 man, then it would be more than 100% easier to handle such a mechanic in 25 man. Do you feel that bosses should have the same amount of HP in 10 man that they do in 25? Same concept. I would almost venture to say that some fight mechanics are easier in 25. I didn't get mutated infection a single time in rotface 25 last week, but I always get it several times in 10 man.

The thing about wearing 25 man gear in 10 man *is* a valid arguement, but something of an exaggerated one. Yes, somebody in a 25 man guild that is going to run icc10 will outgear it, and it will be much easier than intended. However, I guess you aren't aware of how hard it can be to get gear from ICC25 if you are forced to pug it. On my boomkin, I pug it every week...yet the only 264 pieces that I wear are from badges. Issue is that a lot of pugs don't even seem to make it past 4/12. Then if something you even need drops, you then gotta roll against like 10 other people(most of which probably don't even need the item, but roll anyway because they're capable of wearing it and there is nothing to lose by rolling). I doubt I'll ever get a vanq token on that character. Anyway, in an attempt to stay on track...only people that are in 25-man guilds will have the issue that you described and they'll likely do hardmodes on 10 anyway.

I have been working on this off and on for a good while now, since I'm at work and might have forgotten some of your other points...but off the top of my head, the gear thing was the only semi-valid one.

It's also worth mentioning that 25 man raids do have the benefit of being more likely to have a full set of raid buffs and debuffs. And, as mentioned before...there is more room for noobs and slackers in a 25 man.

I'm not necessarily pro-10man...I'm just anti-"state opinions as facts and then support them with twisted half-points"

Is it easier to avoid 1 Malliable Goo or 2 Malliable Goos? Is it easier to focus DPS and stun 1 Val'kyr or 3 Val'kyr? Is it easier to spread out and not chain Vial Gas with only 10 people or with 25 people when the room is the same size? Is it easier to deal with 1 MC in 10man Heroic LDW or 3 MCs in the 25man version?

This is not me stating opinion as fact. The 10mans have been built to fit the 25 man structure. Therefore they are structurally easier because they lessen the impact of many of the mechanics.

If you doubt me go back and look at the rooms that housed the kara and ZA fights in TBC. Most of the rooms are a lot smaller then what you see in the WotLK 10mans.

Ah, that's the other point that I'd meant to address...the spreading out thing. Yes, technically it's easier to stay spread out in 10 man than it is in 25 man. And yes, the room *is* the same size in both versions...but it's really a low impact point. The room is designed to ensure that 25 people have enough room....so it's not exactly *hard* to stay spread out in 25 man. This simply means that in 10 man you have excess room...but is that really such an advantage? Is it really advantageous to have enough room to spread out beyond the range of your healers and so far that you can't reach spores in a reasonable amount of time? Or would you likely spread out the minimum required distance anyway....to make sure that you don't have to move any further than you need to to reach spores?

As far as the malleable goo goes....I guess that i'm still not being very clear. The mechanic *NEEDS* to have twice the impact, because there is over twice the amount of people. In 10man....if he throws out one goo...there is a 10% chance that he will throw that goo at you. In 25man...if he only threw out one goo, there would only be a 2.5% chance that the goo would be thrown at you...thus nullifying the mechanic for most people. So, in order to make it balanced he has to throw out 2 goos. Dunno how that doesn't make sense.

Yes...it would be harder to focus and stun 3 valks than 1 valk...if the same amount of people were doing the job. That would be a no-brainer. But, you have 3 times as many dpsers in 25 man...so you need 3 times as many valks to keep the impact of the mechanic.

Dunno that this needs saying....but once again...1 MC vs 3 MCs.....when you have more people, you need more MCs to keep the mechanic significant. It would be much easier for 25 people to deal with 1 MC than it is for 10 people.

Sounds to me like you have very little experiance raiding in 25man raids. Otherwise you would know that 10man x 2.5 =/= 25man as you seem to be suggesting. Here is why.

Malliable Goo: In 10man you can look to see if one is coming at you. If so, you move. If not, you can stand still. In 25man if one is coming for you, you not only have to move, but you have to figure out where the other one is going as well so you don't run into it. We can debate how hard that is, but you can't deny that it is a concern and an extra task that the 25man raider has to think about that the 10man raider does not

Val'kyr: In 10man if your stunner is picked up your back up stunner takes over without confusion. His target is clear. In 25man, if your stunner is picked up not only do you need a back up to stun the target but the back up has to identify which target to stun. An extra task means it is more difficult.

MCs: Read the two sections above. It's the same story.

The Range Issue: Yes, all the rooms are designed so a 25man raid has enough room to spread out in, but that doesn't mean it's easy. In 25man there are plenty of fights were there is only just enough space to spread out in. In 10mans you can always spread out with room to spare, and yes that is an advantage.

You try to minimize the advantage by taking it to the extreme and suggesting that it would require moving out of range of healers or going so far away that you couldn't get back to a spore in time, but if you think about it you know that is comically inaccurate.

No, 10man raiders don't "spread out the minimum required distance anyway." All raiders spread out in a way they fit. In 25man that may mean a strict 10 yard range where slight adjustments can put you inrange of another player or out of range of the boss. In 10man that would be a comfortable 10-15 yard range where adjustments are easy to make without putting yourself out of range of healers, spores or whatever.